Politicians have been too quick to define themselves against the public sector workforce rather than harnessing their talents during decades of reform, according to a new report by the former Scottish permanent secretary Sir Peter Housden.
Housden served in senior roles at the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government during the 2000s, and only stepped down as the top official serving the Scottish government last year.
In a new report for the Centre for Public Impact drawing on his decades of experience in both central and local government, Sir Peter says it is time for a fundamental rethink of the market-focused, New Public Management model of public sector reform that has remained in vogue among politicians since Margaret Thatcher's administration came to power in the late 1970s.
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While Sir Peter says that New Public Management and its variants have brought "important successes and the creation of lasting assets" – including a stronger sense of accountability and a "new architecture and business model based on choice and contestability" – it is beset by "signal weaknesses and structural flaws".
The former perm sec argues that "groundbreaking" improvements in public service delivery since 1979 were also accompanied by a "shift in posture", with politicians since Thatcher feeling the need to be more "sharp-edged" in their dealings with frontline staff.
"Ministers hailed the beneficial impacts of private sector leadership," he writes. "Resourcing differentials were deployed to encourage migration to new organisational forms set at arm’s length from traditional structures.
"These messages were amplified in media briefings, opinion pieces and speeches but also by the government’s wider project. The sale of council houses, trade union reform and the privatisation of state monopolies were prominent in setting the broader context in these times. Thus did these approaches become consolidated in the mind of public policy as New Public Management."
Meanwhile, Sir Peter says New Labour's public service agenda, which he characterises as seeking "to build on the Conservative architecture of reform" while increasing investment, had a "striking impact" on outcomes, particularly in education, where primary standards rose "markedly" and the number of weak and failing schools was "substantially reduced".
But he argues that Labour's continued use of New Public Management-inspired "shock-therapy" to raise standards, including its focus on targets, came to be viewed by some sectors of the workforce as "burdensome, over-directive and narrowly-focused".
"A propensity to intervention was clearly justified," he writes. "But the New Labour narrative was one of deficits in individual or institutional ambition, skill, diligence and nerve.
"The solution would be a summary change of leadership made with frequent recourse to the tropes or actuality of private sector intervention as the catalyst of change. This privileging of the private sector implied a hierarchy of expertise.
"The belief among frontline staff that sustainable improvement required a collective effort and multiple contributions over time was undermined by the ideology of super-heads, turn-round chief executives and academy sponsors who would cast the veils from their eyes."
"Sword-in-hand leadership model"
Sir Peter says that, despite moves to bolster local accountability, the coalition government led by David Cameron continued the trend of prime ministers who sought to define themselves against public services that were, by default, "ensnared in red tape, overpopulated with managers and presenting an impersonal face" to citizens.
"This sword-in-hand leadership model is an important point of reference in government," he argues.
"It legitimises command and control regimes. It also seeks out its own in public services where iconoclastic and often controlling leaders are lionised. These are inimical messages and role models in building a spirit of common endeavour."
Sir Peter says that now is the time for a new approach to public service reform, which, while retaining a strong emphasis on citizen choice, also recognises that the "skills, confidence and morale" of practitioners are "first-order priorities".
"Practitioners should become co-authors of public service improvement" – Sir Peter Housden
He calls for recruitment, staff engagement, talent management and succession planning to be seen as "major preoccupations throughout the system to ensure public services attract, retain and develop staff of the highest quality".
Meanwhile, the former Scottish government chief acknowledges that government does not have a monopoly on good ideas, calling on the public sector to acknowledge the "density, vibrancy and engagement of community and voluntary organisations" – while avoiding "stereotypes" on the effectiveness of either private or third sector providers.
"The appropriate foundation for a new paradigm lies not in a fresh theory of the state but in the lives of citizens," Sir Peter writes.
"The unifying goal for public services should be to enable citizens to be, and remain, in charge of their own lives.
"This implies a profound shift in our thinking and practice. It requires an asset-based approach to mobilise the citizen’s energy, resilience and hinterland in the drive to secure personal autonomy – the process known in the trade as co-production."
He adds: "This has to go beyond the circumstances and engagement of the individual citizen and requires systematic investment in social capital in pressurised communities.
"Co-production is a collaborative process enjoining the citizen and practitioner. It thus requires the rehabilitation of the public service workforce from its current subsidiary and problematic status. Practitioners should become co-authors of public service improvement."
Rethinking Public Services by CivilServiceWorld on Scribd